It was late Saturday morning when workers at Vicente’s Tropical Grocery on Main Street noticed that their customers’ EBT cards, or food debit stamp cards, were not working.

The Saturday of a holiday weekend is typically one of the busiest shopping days at this bustling market.

“The EBT system crashed,” said manager Alino Rodrigues who has worked at Vicente’s Tropical Grocery for the past 13 years.

“It was working earlier this morning and then around 11:30 the system said ‘no host response’ and we cannot connect to the network,” said Rodrigues.

He said calls to the processing center for EBT got forwarded to voicemail.

People in Massachusetts as well as 16 other states were not able to use their EBT cards on Saturday after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.

The electronic benefits system experienced a temporary shutdown during a routine test of Xerox back-up systems, company spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said Saturday.

The system had been restored by about 10 p.m. Saturday.

Vicente’s isn’t the only store that had issues on Saturday. A sign on the Brockton Market Basket on Westgate Drive notified customers that the EBT system was not working.

“We’ve had to turn people away,” said Trucchi’s manager Dick Coon in West Bridgewater.

The issues with EBT at that store also started Saturday morning, he said.

“We called EBT to no avail. It’s not a good thing, but we’re going to have to get through it,” said Coon.

He added that there had been a few disgruntled customers and said he would probably feel the same way. The store had posted signs notifying customers of the EBT failure in the windows as well as on all the registers.

“The EBT cards stopped working across the state around 11,” said Tom Bergeron, the manager at the Middleboro Trucchi’s.

That store had to turn people away as well if they only had EBT cards as payment, said Bergeron.

Families don’t need to go hungry and can turn to their local food pantry. In Middleboro, Al Cronin, president of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul food pantry at the Sacred Heart Church, is ready to help. He said families from Middleboro, Lakeville, Carver and Rochester who need food should call the 508-947-1717 hotline.

Cronin said calls are usually answered the same day.

“We’ll do what we can, we’ll be glad to help,” he said. “Let’s hope they get the EBTs up and running soon.”

Calls to several Brockton food pantries were not immediately returned on Saturday.

Because of construction work, the food pantry at the Brockton Assembly of God Church is not in operation, said the Rev. Steve Warner, the lead pastor.

Page 2 of 2 - The Abington Food Pantry connected with St. Bridget’s Parish may make some home deliveries if there is a need due to the EBT issues, said Mark Jacoby, treasurer of the food pantry.

“We get hundreds of people every week, anywhere between 35 to 50 families,” said Jacoby.

The Abington Food Pantry is normally open Tuesdays from 5:30 to 7 p.m. for people to shop. But if there is a need, it may open, make deliveries and act accordingly, he said.

At Vicente’s, Rodrigues noted that with the Columbus Day holiday on Monday, he hoped the EBT issue would be cleared up quickly.

“People do depend on the food stamps for their grocery needs,” said Rodrigues.